Diet vs. Exercise, Part III

I truly feel that people’s diets represent intensely personal and emotional aspects of their lives. Trying to overhaul this fragile balance will rarely end well. Each time a person diets, he or she will usually gain back more weight than was ever lost. The more times that people diet, the lesser chance they have of ever being successful. This can put an incredible psychological strain on a person.
Here is what I asked of my clients. To simply eat real food, keep track of everything that they ate, and to sit down for each meal. Eating real food involved some planning as did sitting down for meals. But the planning is a big part of eating consciously and takes away from the anxiety that some people associate with the onset of hunger. Preparing one’s own food can also contribute to the sense of satisfaction felt when eating it. I suggested for my clients to use Sparkpeople.com, a free service that provided a food log, nutritional analysis and an online community. For most people this can yield results, so long as they don’t fall into a deprivation-binge cycle. A heightened awareness as well as a sense of accountability is usually enough to stay on track and see steady results. Just look at Weight Watchers.
However, the results yielded from my above recommendations may not be enough to maintain motivation. This is where exercise comes in. Here, I can’t stress enough that this must be strenuous exercise. Cardio, resistance training, plyometrics, core work and all other exercises should be demanding, and should challenge the person in some new way each time. A good way to check in on this - at the end of every workout, the exerciser should feel a massive endorphin high. Although weight loss through a low-calorie diet may offer faster results, I think the best way to reduce body fat is to keep a moderate calorie diet, avoiding any ultrahigh calorie meals and then starting a rigorous exercise schedule. It’s my opinion that the reason exercise is undervalued as a weight loss tool in the health community is because the activities they reference are repetitive, low- to-moderate intensity ones, like walking. While great for starting out, the body will adapt to this, and people will only continue to see results if they increase intensity (speed, incline) or better yet, try other exercises such as swimming or kickboxing. Additionally, it doesn’t appear that many of these studies follow the clients over a long enough period to take into account increased metabolism and body composition differences from muscle gain.
The essence of what I’m trying to say is that the more weight you can take off as a result of intense workouts rather than dietary restriction, the more sustainable you’re results will be. After all, the term yo-yo dieting was coined for a reason.